


Fated

by Camorra



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Freeform, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 23:13:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16901619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camorra/pseuds/Camorra
Summary: Choice is of immeasurable value.





	Fated

Back when Shiki was still called Haruya, he would curl up against his mother as she smoked, the heady scent of tobacco lingering in the air. 

She would run her fingers through his hair with one free hand, brushing it away from his forehead.

“How was your day, darling boy?” she would say, making a point of asking before she left for work.

And he would tell her about the butterfly he saw in the schoolyard that day and not about how he got in trouble for another fight because someone called her a whore _again._

He thinks she knew anyway, and her hands were gentle and cool as she dabbed at a cut on his forehead or his lip or his knuckles.

He didn’t see her much when he was in school, she worked nights and he was gone days, but in the summer, they’d have dinner together.

The air would be muggy and warm, and their apartment would smell like a hundred different meals being cooked at once, and loose strands of his mother’s hair would curl on her neck, sticking to her Soul Mark.

Her’s was a pretty thing. Her’s was a light yellow, a canary in flight, as gentle and lively as she was.

Every night before work, she would carefully cover it in makeup.

“But it’s so pretty,” he would say, reaching out to run his fingers over it.

She would smile and catch his hand and kiss his fingers. “Yes, but not everyone likes to see it. Some like to pretend they don’t have one.”

“Why?” Because he’s read the stories. The prince and the princess _always_ fall in love and life is perfect and happy. He’s seen the TV shows and everyone _knows_ that life is better with the one person that will love you, always and and forever and completely. If anyone deserves light in their life, it’s his mother.

“Because, darling,” his mother will say, a small smile on her lips. “Just because.”

When Haruya is ten, his mother finds the man with a flying canary on his neck like hers and while his mother becomes Takahashi, he becomes Shiki, and not Haruya.

And the movies say that it’s all supposed to be good now. His mother should glow and be filled with an inner light and have a perpetual song on the tip of her tongue.

“Shiki,” the new man will slur, running his hand through Shiki’s hair. Pawing at it, really. “Be a good boy and get lost for a few hours, huh?”

And Shiki will roam the streets of Tokyo, haunting the back alleys until it’s safe to come home, when he doesn’t have to listen to the sounds the man makes as he fucks his mother.

When Shiki turns eleven, he drops a cup and the man swings an arm and it catches him on the mouth and it _hurts._

And when the man loses his temper, Shiki takes the brunt of it. When he’s in the way. When he’s breathing too loud.

He hates the man for it.

Hates that he’s gormless and weak and can’t control himself.

But mostly, he hates that he’s not strong enough, not big enough to fight and win even when the man is drunk.

He’s small and scrawny and he learns to fight dirty. To hit low and hard and to make sure his opponent doesn’t get back up.

When Shiki is fifteen and in the park because he doesn’t want to go home, the man beats his mother to death, because Shiki is not there to be a better target.

When Shiki is fifteen, he learns that Soul Marks don’t mean a goddamn thing. Soul Mates are people and people are shitty.

When Shiki is seventeen, he hears the man dies in a back-alley, addicted to speed and covered in his own piss.

 

Izaya’s ten when the twins are born and they have matching ivy chains twining around their wrists, tying them together forever.

It’s wrong. It’s all sorts of wrong and not-right and not-okay and his mom isn’t allowed to come home until the police investigate and ask all sorts of questions, like the Oriharas could have warped their children while still in the womb. Like it’s their fault.

Like they created this freak of nature by having the audacity to _breed_ when their soulmarks aren’t the same.

Like it’s not the norm.

Izaya’s thirteen when he starts middle school.

“Do you wanna start a club?” his classmate says, hand behind his back, eyes shining.

“Not particularly,” Izaya says, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and standing.

“It can be anything you want,” his classmate says, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Like Biology. You said you like to study humans, right?”

“If you don’t have a specific club in mind, why bother? Need to buff your resume for high school?”

The classmate laughs, bright and obnoxious. “Nah. Doesn’t matter what high school I go to, I just gotta start a club. Make new friends.”

Izaya quirks an eyebrow. “Looking for your matching Mark? I could have just flashed you, no need to go through all the trouble.”

The classmate laughs again. “No, no. I’m not looking for that. Though, we can make a club about that if you want. I really don’t care.”

“I’ll think about it,” Izaya says, not intending to do a damn thing.

But he does.

He asks around.

He finds out that his name is Shinra Kishitani.

And Shinra is Strange by any standard.

But Shinra is fascinating because he has no Soul Mark and he’s not even a little ashamed.

“It means they’re another human out there with the same, why would I be ashamed that mine’s not human?”

“Is it an animal?” Izaya says, because it’s odd the stress Shinra puts on _human_ and Shinra’s that sort of psycho that just might have a poor cat he’s got his eye on.

But Shinra just laughs and laughs and that’s the end of that.

Izaya’s fourteen when Shinra takes a knife for him and he finds that he _lied._

“Hey, they let you in!” Shinra says, “I wasn’t sure that they would, maybe you’re here to finish the job.”

“Maybe they want me to, have you been irritating the nurses?”

He’s almsot that sure Shinra has something that represent him curling on his skin. Something, anything. Reciprocity.

On his right shoulder is a large scar, messy in the aftermath, but clearly clean in execution, neat lines slashing through whatever once marked it.

All that’s visible is the pigmentation, a messy yellow intertwined with the scar tissue. The desiccated remains of a Soul Mark.

The only neat thing on his body is a Celtic cross, carefully carved into the skin of his left arm. It’s almost poetic, that’s where Izaya has his Mark. But his isn’t yellow, it’s a red spider lily with snaking petals.

Shinra catches Izaya looking, lovingly traces the lines of it with his fingers.

“It’s for Celty,” he says, love and affection clear in his voice.

“But what happened to your shoulder?”

“Oh,” Shinra brushes his hand up on his shoulder, like he forgot it was there. “A mistake. Ah, but my love for Celty is far more pure and deep than anything!”

“Yes. Of course,” Izaya agrees, because insanity is pure in its own way.

 

Shiki is twenty when he gets his first tattoo.

“It’s dark,” the artist says. “Would you call yourself a violent person, Shiki?”

“Too dark?” Shiki says, ignoring the last clause. It’s nothing but an old wives’ tale.

The artist snorts, “hardly. Nothing’s too dark if you work the design right. Get your hopes up? Gonna have the best of both worlds?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Shiki says.

It hurts.

They said it would, but that doesn’t prepare him at all. It feels less like his skin is being pricked than it does like his muscles, his bones, the very marrow of him is being covered. It burns like fire and hollows him out.

“You didn’t scream,” the artist says, “most do.”

It’s really not a consolation.

But just because something is covered doesn’t mean it’s forgotten.

Regardless, Shiki doesn’t look for his Soul Mate.

Frankly, he has no time, even if he cared to.

“I can’t use a gun,” Akabayashi says for the tenth time to Aozaki, “because I’m _missing an eye.”_

“I don’t see how that _matters,_ ” Aozaki says stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. “You can still aim, can’t you?”

“I have no depth perception, asshat,” Akabayashi snaps. “Because I _only have one eye._ I _can’t aim.”_

“You sure you’re not just a bad shot?” Aozaki says, using a finger to clean out his ear. He’s going for boredom, but misses because he was never graced with acting skills and radiates malevolent delight instead.

“Hey, I’m all for a competition. Assuming we’re on even ground, of course,” Akabayashi says, twirling a pen and smiling like a maniac.

“Don’t need to compete to know that I’m better than you.”

 

Izaya is sixteen when he enters high school and starts to court death.

“This is Izaya, my best friend from high school,” Shinra says. “He’s an awful person, really.”

“Now, now, that’s not very kind of you,” Izaya says, not removing his eyes from _Shizu-chan._ He can’t. He’s not dumb.

Izaya is eighteen when he finds that Shizuo is his soulmate.

It changes nothing.

It changes _everything_.

“Look, look, Shizu-chan,” he says from the roof of an alley-way restaurant. “We _match.”_

“The _fuck,_ you _shitty flea,”_ Shizuo roars from the road. “Are you _trying_ to make my life miserable, huh? Is this some sort of _joke?”_

If it is a joke, it’s a cosmic one. Shizuo doesn’t kill him that night but he comes awfully close.

He tries again.

“Shizuo,” he says, approaching him alone, arms spread, unarmed. “I was serious, ne? We match.”

And somehow it’s even worse to not see boiling rage but tired acceptance and quiet misery. “I know.”

“Ah.”

“Do ya wanna try?” Shizuo says, and Izaya can see he means it. Stupid, stupid Shizu-chan is willing to _settle_ for him because that’s what everyone does, because that’s what you’re _supposed_ to do.

“No, I think I’ll pass on this adventure, thanks for your _kind_ offer.”

 

Shiki is twenty-eight and tired and jaded when Izaya slinks into his life.

And Izaya is twenty-one and sharp and too brilliant by half when Shiki becomes his point of contact.

“So you’re the next rank up, ne?” Izaya says, comfortable in the back-seat of an Awakusu car. “Shame what happened to Kine, isn’t it?”

“It was for the best,” Shiki says. Because had it been five years earlier, Kine wouldn’t have been able to leave in anyway except a body-bag. He’s still courting that now, there’s a meeting to decide if Aozaki’s next target used to be a co-worker.

“Was it?” Izaya says, looking out the window lazily. “Seems like an odd lose end to have wandering about.” Izaya swings his head in to smile at Shiki with razor-sharp teeth. “But I suppose the Awakusu-kai is an odd organization, allows so much freedom in its management. Enough freedom to, say, start a sizable faction supporting their eventual coup, if they were so inclined.”

Shiki doesn’t know if it’s what Orihara was after, but he argues hard for Kine to live any way.

 

Shiki is twenty-eight and Izaya is twenty-two and Izaya is all coy smiles and ‘who would have thought _that_ would happen, ne?’ He’s all mythology and long discussions about philosophy and has the oddest taste in television that Shiki’s ever encountered.

Shiki’s twenty-eight and can’t even remember what his Mark looked like but he doesn’t think it matters because Izaya is the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted and bites him hard enough to draw blood.

 

Shiki’s twenty-nine and sleeping with Izaya is probably one of the best and worst ideas Shiki’s ever had.

“Harder,” Izaya will grind out, even as he’s bent over Shiki’s desk, pinned by his neck to the wooden surface, desk rocking with the force.

Because Izaya will take anything Shiki throws at him, spit in his eye, and ask if that’s all he’s got.

“I said _harder,_ damn it.”

He’ll _give_ him harder.

Shiki hikes one of Izaya’s legs off the ground, forcing his back to curve and changing the angle. Izaya groans, nails skittering on the surface of the desk, clawing for purchase the slick wood won’t give.

And after, Izaya will pull on his coat and look at Shiki in a way that makes him feel alive and wary, like he poked a tiger in the nose and is simply waiting for it to reach out and swipe a paw at him.

Instead, Izaya will invite himself into Shiki’s apartment later that evening and curl into him like a cat.

 

Shiki’s thirty-four and Izaya’s twenty-eight and he’s standing in Shiki’s bathroom with a towel around his waist, preening into a mirror.

“I’m going _grey_ ,” he says, finding the maybe one grey hair on his entire body and glaring at it with a ferocity that would make anything else burst into flames.

“You’re _fine_ ,” Shiki says, reaching around him for his toothbrush.

“Of course you would say that,” Izaya whines, “you’re _entirely_ gray.”

“Is that right?”

Izaya’s eyes are sly and dancing with mirth as he says, “I suppose it’s a sign of your declining, ah, _vigor,_ ne?” Because Izaya can’t ever ask for anything outright, but Shiki’s more than happy to prove to him he’s still got it and will for a long time.

 

Shiki’s forty and Izaya’s making a huge fuss and won’t let him forget, but he’s curled on Shiki’s chest like he would when he was twenty-four and tracing the ink on Shiki’s forearm like it might unlock more secrets.

They don’t match. Shiki is covered in swirling ink and Izaya is blank white skin, but they fit together like puzzles pieces and Izaya chooses to come home each night and chooses to tease Shiki about his reading glasses.

And those thousand little choices keep them together stronger than any piece of skin ever could.


End file.
